In silver halide photographic materials, it has often been the practice to color a photographic emulsion layer or other layers to allow light having wavelengths in a specified range to be absorbed.
When it is required to control the spectral composition of light that will be incident upon a photographic emulsion layer, a colored layer is usually positioned farther from the support than the photographic emulsion layer on the photographic material. Such a colored layer is called a filter layer. If there are a plurality of photographic emulsion layers such as in multi-layer color photographic materials, a filter layer is usually positioned therebetween.
In order to prevent a smeared image, that is, in order to prevent halation which is often caused when light that has been scattered when the light passes through a photographic emulsion layer or after the light has passed through a photographic emulsion layer is reflected at the interface between the emulsion layer and the support or at the surface of the photographic material opposite to the emulsion layer and thus is again incident upon the photographic emulsion layer, it has been common practice to provide a colored layer between an emulsion layer and a support or on the surface of a support opposite to the photographic emulsion layer. Such a colored layer in this position is called an antihalation layer In the case of a multi-layer color photographic material, sometimes an antihalation layer is placed between layers also.
To prevent the lowering of sharpness of an image due to scattering of light in a photographic emulsion layer (this phenomenon is generally called irradiation), it has also been the practice to color the photographic emulsion layer.
Since, in most cases, the layers to be colored comprise hydrophilic colloids, generally in order to color them, water-soluble dyes are contained therein. It is necessary, however, that these dyes satisfy the following conditions:
(1) the dyes have suitable spectral absorption properties in conformity with the purpose of the application of the material;
(2) the dyes are photochemically inactive; in other words, the dyes do not give an adverse effect on the performance of silver halide photographic emulsion layers chemically (that is, for instance, the dyes do not lower the sensitivity, latent image fading or fog);
(3) the dyes are to be decolored or dissolved and removed during photographic processing thereby leaving no harmful coloring on the photographic material after processing.
To find dyes that satisfy the above conditions, those skilled in the art have given great effort, and the following known dyes are useful in this respect: for instance, oxonol dyes having a pyrazolone nucleus or a barbituric acid nucleus described, for example, in British Patent Nos. 506,385, 1,177,429, 1,311,884, 1,338,799, 1,385,371, 1,467,214, 1,433,102, and 1,553,516, Japanese patent Application (OPI) Nos. 85130/73, 114420/74, 161233/80, and 111640/84 (the term "OPI" as used herein refers to a "published unexamined Japanese patent application"), and U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,247,127, 3,469,985, and 4,078,933, other oxonol dyes described, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,533,472 and 3,379,533 and British Patent No. 1,278,621, azo dyes described, for example, in British Patent Nos. 575,691, 680,631, 599,623, 786,907, 907,125, and 1,045,609, U.S. Pat. No. 4,255,326 and Japanese Patent Application (OPI) No. 211043/84, azomethine dyes described, for example, in Japanese Patent Application (OPI) Nos. 100116/75, and 118247/79, and British Patent Nos. 2,014,598 and 750,031, anthraquinone dyes described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,865,752, arylidene dyes described, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,538,009, 2,688,541, and 2,538,008, British patent Nos. 584,609, and 1,210,252, Japanese Patent Application (OPI) Nos. 40625/75, 3623/76, 10927/76 and 118247/79, Japanese Patent Publication Nos. 3286/73, and 37303/84, styryl dyes described, for example, in Japanese Patent Publication Nos. 3082/53, 16594/69 and 28898/84, triarylmethane dyes described, for example, in British Patent Nos. 446,583, and 1,335,422 and Japanese Patent Application (OPI) No. 228250/84, merocyanine dyes described, for example, in British Patent Nos. 1,075,653, 1,153,341, 1,284,730, 1,475,228, and 1,542,807 and cyanine dyes described, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,843,486 and 3,294,539.
Of these, oxonol dyes having two pyrazolone nuclei have such a nature that they are decolored in a developing solution containing a sulfite and have less adverse effect on photographic emulsions, and they have been used in practice in photographic materials.
However, some dyes belonging to this group have such a defect that even though the dye exhibits less adverse affects on the photographic emulsion itself, the dye spectrally sensitizes a spectrally sensitized emulsion in an undesired spectral wavelength range, or that lowering of sensitivity presumably caused by dislodging a sensitizing dye may take place.
Some dyes belonging to this group remain after processing if the development processing is quickened, and such rapid development processing has been used more and more in practice recently. To obviate this, it has been suggested to use dyes high in reactivity with a sulfite ion, but in such a case, the stability in the photographic film is disadvantageously insufficient, the density lowers with the lapse of time, and the desired photographic effects cannot be obtained.
For example, the dyes described in British Patent 1,466,836 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,587,195 cannot solve the above problems. British Patent 1,466,836 describes oxonol dyes having an aralkyl group, wherein a sulfonic acid group is bonded to the 1-position of the pyrazolone nucleus. These dyes are disadvantageous in that a stain occurs in many cases after processing.
Further, although the dyes of the present invention may be covered by general formula (IV) in U.S. Pat. NO. 4,587,195, wherein m=m=1, U.S. Pat. NO. 4,587,195 neither describes a concrete example of m=m=1 nor describes a difference in effect between m=m=1 and m=m=0. the present inventors have found a difference in effect, that is, although the effect in U.S. Pat. No. 4,587,195 is that a stain can be prevented when the specific processing, the specific sensitizing dye and the irradiation-preventing dye are combined, the present inventors have found that the stain is prevented even without combining the specific processing with the specific sensitizing dye in the case of m=m=1 or 2. Furthermore, it is necessary that the irradiation-preventing dye does not have a bad effect on the photographic properties of the silver halide emulsion layers. The present inventors have also found that such a bad effect is extremely small in the case of m=m=1 or 2, as compared with the case of m=m= 0.